Political Crisis In Bangladesh: Lessons For Aotearoa New Zealand

Tuesday, 6 August 2024, 4:48 pm
Opinion: Keith Rankin

This morning the biggest news story by far was the collapse of the government of Bangladesh, the world's eighth-biggest country by population, and a source of labour and international students for New Zealand. Not that you would have known that this was such a big story if reliant on the New Zealand media. The best RNZ could do was to note that the deposed Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, was the daughter of a former president who was assassinated.

Hasina's father was in fact the "Father of the Nation", Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He may be regarded as Bangladesh's Nelson Mandela. His initial role as a saint was shorter lived than Mandela's; though was revived by his daughter.

Bangladesh is a country of comparatively recent naissance, though not recent enough for most New Zealanders to be aware of its origins. I certainly remember the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, organised by The Beatles' George Harrison; the forerunner of Bob Geldof's 1985 Live Aid concert for Ethiopia.

Bangladesh was first created as East Pakistan, the neglected Bengali half of a disjointed sectarian state created as a political solution to the decolonisation of India. And while the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh makes the new country officially secular, in reality it operates like Pakistan as a Muslim state.

The problem in Bangladesh is that Sheik Hasina's government not only became increasingly autocratic, but it became elitist to the point of envisaging itself as a dynastic aristocracy. Hasina morphed into an absolutist queen. The most politically sensitive component of her reign was the reinstatement of a quota system which conferred special privileges to the descendants of freedom fighters; ie those who actively participated in the successful 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War ('guerillas', 'freedom fighters', or 'terrorists'; depending on the perspective of the observer). Their principal vehicle was the Awami League, which then was to Pakistan and Bangladesh what Hamas now is to Israel and Palestine.

The problem with the quota system is that it drove a wedge between Muslim Bangladeshis, formalising a pedigree-distinction between a privileged formally-defined elite and the hard-working and mostly poor masses. Let's hope that the matter resolves relatively peacefully, as the 2022 insurrection in Sri Lanka seems to have resolved.

But the parallel I wish to draw is with Aotearoa New Zealand, where there are increasing tensions – in Parliament and elsewhere – between elite Iwi Māori and 'lesser' Māori, with most of those participating in the governing coalition being regarded as the latter. New Zealand, in some respects, is moving – like Bangladesh – into a society where a person's birthright is being codified by whakapapa.

One particular example of context here is shown here: Stats NZ senior adviser … speech ‘offensive’ …, NZ Herald, 23 July 2024. The problem is the epithet taurekareka, which translates as 'slave' or 'slaves'; the word conveys an underlying sense of contempt. It is also worth questioning whether, in the new Aotearoa New Zealand school history curriculum, this underclass concept will at all feature in discussions of Māori social history. History is history, warts and all; that dictum applies to all identity groups.

There appears to be an attitude among some Māori that 'all Māori are equal, but some are more equal than others'. The cause that sparked yesterday's revolution in Bangladesh was the entrenching elitist view that the descendants of one group of Bangladeshis are 'more equal' – in law and in presumption – than the descendants of other Bangladeshis.

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

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Keith Rankin

Political Economist, Scoop Columnist

Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s.

Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like.

Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.

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